Recapping the Review: The $90 Turkey Sandwich

I arrived in New York on a Sunday. The book review was the following day at 10:30AM at the Young Ones HQ on the Eastern edge of Chelsea near the docks.

When I got there there was already a group of students waiting outside. Most were my classmates and there were foreign students speaking in tongues and a group of other pygmy-teen students with their printed portfolios at their sides. Apparently their school disapproved of Ipad portfolios. 

The doors opened and we were ushered into another line 80 students long. At the table sat three ladies. Each had a list. One was checking in students. The other two were checking in the recruiters. Only, there weren’t any recruiters in line.  Twenty minutes later, my name was checked off of a list and I received a nametag. Twenty minutes after that, the first recruiter showed up and was checked in.

We were told to get to into the next line and schedule our interviews. Each interview was to be 20 minutes long. Projected on the wall was the master spreadsheet which updated, in real time, student names as they were put in time slots. The first 10 students were given an interview every twenty minutes until 3pm, so about 8 or 9 interviews.

It slowly dawned on the organizers that they were quickly running out of time slots. Instead of recalling the students and starting over, they told the remaining 100 students in line they’d get THREE appointments. Have I mentioned that the review cost $90?

I got my schedule. Publicis Modem at 11:40, Ogilvy at 2:20 and R/GA at 2:40. The time slots ran out before they made it through half of the line. The rest of the folks would have to wait until more reviewers showed up.

The first interview went well overall. My feedback consisted mainly of presentation advice and “don’t put two masculine campaigns back to back” and “no, let us flip through the work and you just talk while we do it.” One of the reviewers was a Circus copywriter grad (woot), and the other was her Art Director partner. They were not recruiters. I thought they were going to be recruiters. They were not worth $30. I will say, however, that I put the presentation tips they gave me to good use during the rest of my New York adventure. Okay, $5.

My second appointment got cancelled because the organizers forgot to ask the reviewers what their schedule was before assigning slots. It’s hard to have a 2:40 appointment with R/GA when R/GA has to be Uptown for a 2:00 meeting. Also, the organizers forgot that the reviewers were humans and neglected to schedule a lunch break for them. We students, on the other hand, were awarded a deliciously plain turkey sandwich, chips and cookie. Some joked it was the best $90 sandwich they’d ever had. Personally, I thought the cookie was worth at least $25.

My third interview was with Ogilvy. Barbara was a delight. She had stayed for the entire review, and very well may have skipped her lunch in order to keep on schedule. She gave excellent feedback and totally redeemed the review for me. She went through every one of my campaigns and seemed genuinely interested in the work. As of right now, I still owe her a big thank you. *note to self.

And that was it. My three two interviews.

At one point I got desperate for feedback and poached an interview with a recruiter from a shop in LA and had a nice conversation with him. Actually it was incredibly awkward. At that point I was trying to get my money’s worth and my desperation came across more than anything else. He didn’t want to look at any of my work and instead we just chatted about whatever stuff we could. He asked me “Where do you want to work?” and I had a hard time answering the question. It was embarrassing. I named the best three shops I could think of and acted confident. Had he asked me the question after the agency tours during the week, I would have had a much better answer for him.

In the end, I would’ve preferred a Chicago-style portfolio review. That is, rather than the students picking the agencies they want to interview with, the recruiters pick the students. This way, if a student’s book is awful, or the wrong fit, the recruiter can save a lot of time and politely get up and go somewhere else. We would’ve had more interviews and gotten more feedback. 

- This is where I make sure to let recruiters/ad people who may read this know that I’m not a complete asshole –

Either way, it was a good, though somewhat frustrating experience, and I’m grateful for the recruiters and reviewers coming all the way out to New York to look at a huge amount of student work. 

It was not an easy review for the students, but at least we got to eat something.